New Amazon Services Accommodate Photography, Literary Buffs

Amazon.com customers are able to pursue an even wider variety of their favorite hobbies online, with the company's recent launch of two new digital media initiatives.

Amazon is giving consumers access to a suite of digital photography products through its partnership with Shutterfly Inc., an online provider of digital photo services. In addition, the company is offering "Amazon Shorts," a service that allows customers to download content from a range of short-form digital literature for just $0.49.

Shutterfly announced this week a budding business relationship with Amazon Services Inc. (a subsidiary of Amazon.com) to provide its digital photography services via Amazon.com's home page or electronics store or through a newly created co-branded Web site.

Through the Shutterfly partnership, Amazon customers can access photo-sharing applications, like Collections, in which a personal address is used to store and share online photo albums. The service also offers an online photo album, free unlimited storage and image editing tools for photo cropping, red-eye removal and more, according to a recent press release.

Amazon customers can pay to upload their photos for professional development in a range of sizes. In addition, photos can be incorporated into greeting cards, T-shirts, mugs, calendars and other personalized gifts that are available for shipment around the world.

"Amazon is looking forward to working with Shutterfly," said Glenn Cunningham, vice president of Amazon's Electronics store, in a statement. "Our customers have come to expect a superior shopping experience from Amazon.com and we believe, with the addition of Shutterfly's digital photography products and services, this will serve to enhance their shopping experience with us."

No worries, literary buffs can get their fix too.

Amazon announced recently that it has launched a new "Shorts" service. "Amazon Shorts" gives consumers access to digital short-form literature (not available in print) for about 50 cents a pop.

"Publishers have always had a hard time selling and marketing the single, short-form work and these days it's even harder. Amazon.com has created a new way for authors to get that kind of work out there, which is incredibly exciting," said "Shorts" contributing author Daniel Wallace in a recent press release.

"Amazon Shorts" content incorporates a variety of literary formats, including the classic short story, personal memoirs from established authors, one-act plays and alternate chapters to familiar stories. Amazon offers "Short" contents in literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers, nonfiction and essays, and sci-fi and fantasy genres, according to the press release.

Consumers can access the "Shorts" Web site through Amazon's home page or bookstore, where they can view individual story product pages with images, descriptions and a complete list of that author's previous works.

The copyrighted short stories can be purchased for download (no digital rights management software necessary) for $0.49 and stored permanently to the customer's "digital locker." Users can view and print the short-form work from a Web page, download as a PDF file or request a copy via e-mail, according to the press release.